SEATTLE – In the handful of minutes it took Rodger Saffold to get dressed and pack his belongings, he’d already digested and flushed the Rams’ blowout win over the Seattle Seahawks and fixed his eyes on the Tennessee Titans.

Oh, there were a few more high-fives to share. A festive bus ride from CenturyLink Field to the Seattle airport and the lively flight home to Los Angeles. The 42-7 thrashing of the Seahawks was, after all, a win to be celebrated.

“We’ll enjoy this one for a little while,” he told me Sunday as he finished packing up.

But a mental switch had already been clicked. Not just at Saffold’s locker stall, but across the entire Rams dressing room.

“Great win, but on to the next one” was the general theme.

Saffold was pleased. But hardly surprised.

It’s been that way all season.

“The maturity of this team, to be able to take a win like this, get on the bus and forget about it and start thinking about the next one, that’s what this team is all about,” Saffold said. “By tomorrow, we’ll totally have this off our minds and off the table. And we’ll be back to work. We realize what’s ahead of us.”

It’s who the Rams are these days. And it’s helped perch them on the cusp of their first division title in 14 years.

With two games remaining, they need one win or one Seahawks loss to lock down the NFC West. A sweep puts them in position to secure the third seed in the NFC playoffs and a home game in the first round.

Don’t bet against the Rams winning out against the Tennessee Titans and San Francisco 49ers.

This is a hungry bunch. And one mature beyond their years.

Much like their coach – the 31-year-old Sean McVay – the Rams are a collection of old souls in spite of the overall youthfulness of their 53-man roster.

Maybe it was the offseason additions of mindful veterans like Andrew Whitworth and Connor Barwin and John Sullivan and Robert Woods. They, along with Saffold and fellow veteran Robert Quinn, are the conscientious foundation from which the Rams continue to draw.

Then again, Jared Goff and Aaron Donald and Alec Ogletree and Lamarcus Joyner and Todd Gurley and Cooper Kupp and many others are heedful beyond their NFL service time, helping create a locker room in which the Rams remain perpetually grounded and centered.

In doing so, the Rams have managed to avoid tumbling too far in one direction or another. Whether it’s an emotional win or a devastating loss, the Rams efficiently and quickly extract and process the vital elements that will best serve them moving forward, toss out everything else, and immediately begin focusing on the next challenge.

It’s an innate trait that’s served them incredibly well. The occasional loss this year has never turned into a losing streak. And by maturely embracing their big wins, they’ve managed to avoid crashing to earth the following week.

The Rams’ performance against the Seahawks is a perfect example. They were coming off a brutally frustrating loss to the Eagles that left them kicking themselves over opportunities squandered. Instead of dwelling on their disappointment to the point of detriment, they used it to fuel their subsequent response.

That response was emphatically unleashed on the helpless Seahawks in a resounding win that puts them back on track for a division title and a potential home game in the first round of the playoffs.

“I love the mental toughness and their ability to take things one day at a time,” McVay marveled. “I think there is a true appreciation that we have that we are continuing to gain as coaches and players for just taking it one day at a time and not getting to far ahead of ourselves. Whether you win or lose, you have to look at the mistakes and clean them up. With some of the things we have done to have some success, you want to continue to do those and see if you can improve on things as the season progresses.

It’s all about keeping things in perspective.

For some teams those are merely words. A cliche, if you will.

The Rams embody it.

“I don’t know if you can really teach it, it’s just part of who a team is, and I think most good teams are that way,” Goff said. “They’re able to kind of forget quickly if something doesn’t go right because if there is, it is a 16-game season, and each one counts the same, so you kind of have to stick with that mentality. That’s the same mentality we’ll take after a win and after a loss.”

Vincent Bonsignore is an NFL columnist for the Southern California News Group. Having covered the Los Angeles sports scene for more than two decades, Bonsignore has emerged as one of the leading voices on the Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers, the NFL and NFL relocation.

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